Glenn Greenwald: “Why Would Any American Politicians Support the MEK?”

“Getting off the FTO [Foreign Terror Organization] list is a stepping-stone to the MEK’s [Mujahedin e Khalq] main goal: getting America to install it as the new government of Iran.

Why would American politicians want that?

There are two main reasons, neither of them good.

The first is ignorance.

The MEK presents itself well and is good at running “Astroturf” campaigns. Its NCRI is a self-proclaimed “parliament in exile,” dedicated to the principles of western liberal democracy.

Over the years, lots of American civilian and military officials have failed to do their homework and fallen for the MEK’s sales spiel, excited as they were to hear what they wanted to hear. (If something sounds too good to be true…)

Does this remind you of Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress? It should. As Ali Gharib has shown, the same people who helped Chalabi push us into Iraq are now orchestrating public events where former officials promote the MEK.

The second reason is money.

The officials were paid to speak on the MEK’s behalf, up to $30,000 per speech. Not bad for a few minutes work.

But this is just the beginning.

What the media has generally failed to mention is that these former officials are now in the national/homeland security business. Just take a quick look around Wikipedia, Forbes, and OpenSecrets.org, and here is what you will find:

Tom Ridge has his own security consultancy (Ridge Global, LLC) and lobbying firm (Ridge Policy Group). He chairs the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s national security task force and sits on the boards of at least one military contractor (TechRadium, Inc.) and one company (Geospatial Corporation) that serves the oil and gas industry.

Francis Fragos Townsend chairs an industry association for intelligence contractors (the Intelligence and National Security Alliance) and is the head of lobbying for a holding company (MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc.) that owns the military contractor AM General.

Rudolph Giuliani has a security consulting firm (Giuliani Partners) and is a partner in a law firm with prominent oil and gas and lobbying practices (Bracewell & Giuliani). He used to own a private equity fund that teamed up with Bear Stearns to invest in security companies.

Louis Freeh has a security and investigations consulting firm (Freeh Group International Solutions, LLC) and a law firm (Freeh Sporkin & Sullivan, LLP), where he represents, among other clients, a Saudi prince in a bribery investigation involving an arms deal. [Louis Freeh is currently overseeing the ongoing criminal investigations into both the Penn State and MF Global scandals.]

Hugh Shelton has served on the boards of directors of several military contractors, such as L-3 Communications, CACI International, Inc., and Protective Products of America, Inc. [Freeh is also currently sheepherding the MF Global thievery “investigation” and the Penn State child sex ring cover-up “investigation”.)

Bolton, Mukasey, Rendell, and Dean are affiliated with major law firms whose clients include not just standard military contractors but many other more mundane corporations, as expert Nick Turse has shown, also benefit from military largesse. (Bolton is also affiliated with several pro-war think tanks.)

But full-on war, that’s the mother lode. An invasion followed by an Iraq-style lingering occupation and reconstruction would open up hundreds of billions and possibly even trillions of taxpayer dollars for the grabbing.

Hopefully these Treasury Department investigations are a sign that the Obama Administration has finally decided to rein in the warmongers.

Ignorance, profit, and the dreams of a terrorist-cult group are lousy reasons to start a war.”

Our US-based experts specialize in facing and overcoming domestic forms of terrorism like environmental, ecological, anti-abortion, anti-government, and “home-grown” religious extremism. We have expertise in a wide range of fields including law-enforcement, corporate security, homeland-security, intelligence, law, emergency medicine, and anti-terrorism. The Philadelphia office is also home to our campus-outreach initiative; a nationwide network and fusion-center of students and scholars united against terrorism.

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ITRR’s Israeli and American experts provide counter-terrorism training, seminars, and security specialization in dealing with threats such as Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), suicide bombers, and other forms of international terror striking both the public and private sector.

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ITRR: Working with organizations that refuse to surrender their domestic or international operations to terrorism.

“Al-Qaeda has released the Winter edition of its English-language magazine, ‘Inspire’. This is the magazine’s 4th and most recent edition.

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response will send copies upon request to those who have an organizational need for it. When contacting, please state your name, primary email address, and reason for receiving the magazine.

“Mujahedin e Khalq–desginated a dangerous terrorist organization by the US government as AND YET, in violation of US law, politically-powerful and well-connected individuals from Rudy Giuliani to Howard Dean to Tom Ridge are being paid tens of thousands of dollars each to advocate on behalf of this organization.

What’s the ‘real deal’ here?

Simple, as always, when it comes to American foreign policy decisions – ISRAEL.

Unable to have her agents and assassins move about the world freely as she has in times past, Israel now plans to use this dangerous terrorist group in doing her dirty work for her, including carrying out acts of terrorism on American soil to further the cause of war against Iran, if indeed this has not already been the case viz a viz the much-touted assassination plot against the Saudi Ambassador and the killing of the Iranian medical student in Houston, Texas recently

We are joined once again by the one and only Mark Dankof to discuss this very important topic.”

I was at a delist MEK rally at the White House, recently, and I saw quite a few people with Occupy Washington DC (Freedom Plaza – Stop The Machine!) holding signs in support of delisting the MEK. One person I spoke to that day (in Freedom Plaza) told me the group was split between those who supported the MEK delisting rally and those who thought the MEK a USG/Israeli run terrorist organization; or: the enemy. See: Occupy Washington DC/Stop The Machine! (Freedom Plaza) and Otpor/CANVAS

WASHINGTON, DC – Thousands of Iranian-Americans from 41 states took part in a huge rally outside the State Department on August 26, 2011, urging Secretary Clinton to act swiftly and remove the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations.

PHOTO (below) – Thousands of Iranian-Americans [and many (some paid) others] from 41 states took part in a huge rally outside the State Department on August 26, 2011, urging Secretary Clinton to act swiftly and remove the principal Iranian opposition movement, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (PMOI/MEK) from the State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. (source: http://www.delistmek.com/dc-rally-draws-thousands-calling-for-mek-delisting/)

One Response to “Why Would American Politicians Support the MEK?”

THE MEK SHOULD BE OFF THE LIST BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT TERRORIST. THIS IS THE TRUTH THE WHOLE TRUTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH..
THIS IS WHAT THE COURT IN UK & EU AND ALSO USA HAVE DECIDED
SO TAKE THEM OUT OFF THE LIST AND LET THEM CONCENTRATE ON THEIR MAIN ENEMY, THE CURRENT REGIME IN IRAN INSTEAD OF RUNNING AROUND IN US COURTS TO GET THEIR NAME OUT OF THE TERROR LIST WHERE THE IRANIAN REGIME BELONGS NOT ITS OPPOSITION.